sent express to Gomushteppe a chief of caravans
to buy him two pair of buffaloes, for in Khiva
there are none. The leader of caravans went on
to Astrabad, and on his return through Gomushteppe
he and the buffaloes would be the best
of escort to Khiva, for his experience of the
desert was unrivalled.

In that escort, after three weeks in the tents
by the Caspian and the river Gorghen, of which
the innumerable fish scented the water, on went
the Hungarian dervish. In the reedy haunts
of the wild boar, numerous beyond conception,
he was thrown, and narrowly escaped being
ripped up. On his escape he was especially
congratulated, for he was told "a death by the
wound of a wild boar would send even the most
pious Mussulman unclean into the next world,
where a hundred years' burning in purgatorial
fire would not purge away his uncleanliness."
The Afghan, who stuck by the false dervish,
contrived to excite against Mr. Vámbéry the
suspicions of the Khan of Khiva's caravan
leader, but the faithful simple-hearted hadjis
held by their friend, and the adventurer's skill
as an Orientalist and linguist, now and at all
times, carried him safe through every hour of
peril.

On the way through the desert there was at
one place a halt for one of the company to find his
brother's grave. The dead man had been one
of a caravan in which a fat Persian trader
travelled as his guest. The Turkomans got
scent of the Persian, who was going home with
money in his pouch, and attacked the caravan.
Although they cried out that they wanted only
the fat Persian dog, who sobbed and begged
that he might be surrendered, the host died in
defence of his guest, and, dying, commended the
Persian to his brother's guardianship. He had
been safely conveyed to his own home, and the
brother, on his return, now stayed to recover
and carry back to bis own land the body of the
loyal dead.

Deeper in the true desert, where the few
springs were ice-cold, bitter and stinking, when
at one halting-time a search was made for water,
a wild Tartar was found glaring alone in a cave,
who rushed upon his disturbers with presented
spear. He was an outcast from his tribe, a man
with blood on his head, fugitive from the
vendetta. Such fugitives will wander for years
alone in the frightful solitudes, not daring to
face their brother-man.

Khiva, between the wildernesses, lies with its
gardens by a reach of barren desert earth that
stretches to within a league of the city, as the
long dry finger of death laid on the luxuriance of
life.

At Khiva, his enemy, the Afghan, denounced
Mr. Vámbéry to the first official who appeared,
and again in the public bazaar. But the faithful
hadjis, his travelling companions, gathered about
him as a brother, and against all dangers the
Hungarian dervish held by his assumed
character, gave the khan his efficacious blessing,
kicked aside the prime minister, to take for
himself, as holy man, the place of honour by
the khan's side, satisfied all doubts, and baffled
the most suspicious scrutiny. Only he could
not show so much good breeding as to eat all
the sheep's-tail fat to which he was hospitably
pressed. To accept six, seven, or eight
invitations in a day, and at each be required to avoid
the rudeness of confessing one can eat no more,
is beyond European powers in a company where
Mr. Vámbéry noted that his pilgrim brethren
(after their desert fare of little bread and less
water) ate each of them a pound of fat from
the sheep's-tail, two pounds of rice, besides
bread, carrots, turnips, and radishes, and, to
wash all down, swallowed, without exaggeration,
from fifteen to sixteen large soup-plates of
green tea. In Khiva, Mr. Vámbéry dispensed
his blessings, and the "holy breath," and the
health-dust which pilgrims bring from a house
in Medina, said to have been the prophet's.
Although he had here for his friend an old bey
in high reverence, he was suspected to be only
a sham dervish by the mehter, or first minister
of the home department, who was only the less
disposed to be friendly when he found the
stranger patronised by the old bey, whom the
minister regarded as his rival. And while foiling
the attempts of the mehter to unmask him,
and winning honour from the khan, a feeble blear-
eyed vicious devotee of lust and religious
ceremonial, the European adventurer was admonished
to be careful, by the frightful sights he saw
within the precincts of the palace. In one court
he found three hundred prisoners of war, who
were covered with rags, and had for some days
suffered starvation. They were parted into
those of age and quality for sale as slaves, and
those chained in iron collars, who were being
taken to the gallows or the block. Whilst
several were thus led to their death, "I saw,"
says Mr. Vámbéry, "how, at a sign from the
executioner, eight aged men placed themselves
down on their backs upon the earth. They
were then bound hand and foot, and the
executioner gouged out their eyes in turn, kneeling
to do so on the breast of each poor wretch, and
after every operation he wiped his knife,
dripping with blood, upon the white beard of the
hoary unfortunate." This was retribution for
the stripping of a rich caravan, even to the
food and clothes of the travellers, so that of
sixty only eight had survived the hunger and
cold of the desert. At Khiva a man is hanged
if he but casts a look on a veiled woman, and
the woman, buried up to the breasts in earth
beside the gallows, is stoned to death with
handballs of earth (stones there are none). "At
the third discharge the poor victim is
completely covered with dust, and the body,
dripping with blood, is horribly disfigured, and the
death which ensues alone puts an end to her
torture."

If the Khan of Khiva came to London and
were taken to the Opera, it would be well for the
gentlemen and ladies who stare at each other
through optical glasses or with naked eyes,
that he is not Khan of England.

At Khiva, again, soldiers are literally paid by